Dell PowerConnect 8100 CLI Reference Guide - Page 1767

84 Web Server Commands If enabled, the PowerConnect is manageable via industry standard web browsers. User privilege levels are the same as for the CLI. Over 95% of the management functions are available via the web interface, including configuration and firmware upgrades. Web Sessions The HTTP protocol does not provide support for persistent connections. Connections are constantly made and broken so there is no way to know who is accessing the web interface or for how long they are doing so. Additionally, with the use of basic authentication the user authorization is handled by the client browser. This means that once entered, the user name and password are cached in the browser and given to the server on request. Effectively, once a user logs in to the switch, they have access until the browser closes, even across reboots of the switch. This poses a security threat. The Web Sessions feature makes use of cookies to control web connections, sessions. Cookies must be enabled on the browser. The Set-Cookie directive is sent only once at initiation of the session. With the introduction of Web Sessions the client connections can be monitored and controlled. Web Sessions put the authentication control in the PowerConnect instead of the client browser resulting in a more efficient implementation that allows web access while using Radius or TACACS+ for authentication. The web login is implemented in the login page itself instead of a client browser popup. Additionally, there is a logout button, always present on the web interface. There are various commands that have been modified or added to support Web Sessions. Similarly there are modifications to some of the web pages. Support of SNMP configuration for Web Sessions is also available. When the authentication method set for web login authentication is set to TACACS+, the exec shell configuration on the TACACS+ server is used to determine user permissions (read-only or read/ write). If the configured value on the server is 15, the user is given read-write permissions. Any other value is read-only. If exec shell feature is not enabled on the server, the user is given read-only permissions. Web Server Commands 1767